Remember John W. Dean, a Watergate Informant? He’s Back in the Limelight

A pivotal figure in the Watergate investigation, John W. Dean, was dragged back into the limelight on Sunday with President Trump’s defense of the current White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II.

On Saturday, The New York Times published an article online about Mr. McGahn’s extensive cooperation with the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. The Times also reported that Mr. McGahn told people he was determined to avoid the fate of Mr. Dean, former White House counsel for President Richard Nixon.

Mr. Trump took issue with the story on Twitter, saying on Sunday morning that Mr. McGahn cooperated with his blessing. Further, he attacked The Times over the article, saying the news organization had falsely implied Mr. McGahn was a “John Dean type ‘RAT.’” (The Times publicly stated it stood behind the reporting.)

On Sunday, The Times reported that Mr. Trump, who is said to be obsessed with the role Mr. Dean played as an informant during Watergate, was jolted by the idea that he did not know what Mr. McGahn had shared with the special counsel’s investigators.

Now 79, John Wesley Dean III served as White House counsel to Nixon from July 1970 until he was fired in April 1973. He captivated the attention of Americans, though, with his televised testimony in June 1973 before the Senate Watergate Committee. Mr. Dean sat at a table — in a tan suit and signature horn rim glasses, his wife, Maureen, behind him — and told the senators that Nixon was directly involved in the Watergate cover-up. He was one of the first officials in the Nixon administration to speak out.

Mr. Dean was worried he was being set up by his former boss to take the blame for the June 1972 break-in by five men at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington. Indeed, the White House called him the cover-up’s “mastermind,” The Times reported in June 1973. For his part, Mr. Dean has long maintained his colleagues sought to make him a scapegoat.

In an interview in The Times last year, Mr. Dean said he had warned his White House peers at the time: “The jig is up. It’s over.” He also famously told Nixon in a conversation taped by the president in the Oval Office, “We have a cancer within, close to, the presidency, that is growing.” As the Watergate investigation intensified in 1973, Mr. Dean cooperated with the Senate committee.

As part of that deal, Mr. Dean pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and was disbarred from legal practice in Virginia and the District of Columbia. He did not go to prison, serving four months at Fort Holabird, a former Army base in Baltimore.

His testimony and cooperation, though, aided the downfall of Nixon, who resigned on Aug. 9, 1974.

On Monday, Mr. Dean, who lives in Los Angeles, did not respond to an email from The Times seeking comment. But he has been outspoken in his disdain for Mr. Trump, and is a ubiquitous figure on cable news shows. On Saturday, Mr. Dean tweeted: “Nixon, generally very competent, bungled and botched his handling of Watergate. Trump, a total incompetent, is bungling and botching his handling of Russiagate.”

He has spent most of his career writing books about the Nixon administration. He is also a teacher and regular on the lecture circuit. His main theme in books and speeches is to sound the alarm about presidential abuses.